My Little Pony Fan Labor Wiki:Guidelines
Guidelines __NOEDITSECTION__ The guidelines are meant to direct the tone and content of this wiki, and help settle disputes between contributors. Discuss changes in the guidelines on the wiki discussion forum. The About page serves as a quick overview of the most important "rules" and their practical implementation. __TOC__ Behavior *Assume good faith. *Please do not bite the newcomers. Wikia policies *The Wikia Terms of Use forbid harassment and vandalism. *Prohibited content includes excessive harsh language, sexual content, and violence. *The Wikia community guidelines apply. Content *This wiki deals primarily with narrative fan labor about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but also with music and fan art. *Articles about the fandom as a whole are also permitted (e.g. terminology, meet-ups, popular websites, and fan labor creators). *Articles about popular memes and image motifs are permitted as well. Narrative fan labor *"Narrative fan labor" means fan fiction (including comics), fan games, and fanmade videos. *The wiki is a reference work about and not a repository for primary texts (like fan fiction). Works covered by the wiki must have been published elsewhere (ideally on a site dedicated to such content, like fanfiction.net for prose stories). *Original characters (characters who did not appear in the show) should generally only be written about in the context of the work they appear in. **A separate page may be created for an original character if at least one of the stories he/she appears in already has a page, and if he/she is measurably popular (for instance, if there are several derivative works by other people). **Original characters without a connection to a short story or similar work, including "OC ponies", are only permitted on user pages and blogs. There is also another wiki that is a better and more fitting place for this kind of material. Articles Notability *There are no notability standards beyond the fact that any material covered by the wiki must be connected to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in some significant way. *Pages which deal with content that is insufficiently related to the show's fandom may be deleted. *Very short pages may be deleted or incorporated into a list or hub page. *Usually there is no such thing as "too much information". There is one exception: **Some articles cover real people. Only things that actually concern their work for the fan community belong on the wiki; their private lives should remain private. Article length *Avoid creating stubs with little or no information. Merge stubs with existing articles. *Avoid sprawling articles. If they cover several topics, split each topic into its own article. *Some articles may serve as hubs that link to articles of the same topic, similar to a category page. **The general lists for writers, musicians and artists serve as hubs to list fan labor-producing fans who do not yet have a page of their own. Similarly, individual pages for writers, musicians, artists and other people can serve as hubs for individual pieces of work (like compositions) about which not enough can be written to justify a separate page. Verifiability *Articles on this wiki must be theoretically verifiable. That means they must use or refer to sources and works which are either public, or which were once publically available for a longer period of time. *Specific references to such sources are preferred, but not required. **Instructions for adding references to pages, as well as a place to practice, are included on this page. *Original research is permitted. *Unsourced claims may be removed; pages whose content proves to not be verifiable may be deleted. *Disputes should be settled by the editors on talk pages or in comment sections. Images *The wiki is not an indiscriminate image repository. Uploading images *Please avoid both poor quality images as well as images of an excessive file size. *Please give images you upload descriptive names. *Fan art should have the artist credited in the file name or image description. Files without attribution may be deleted. *Where possible, the original source (e.g. a DeviantArt page) should be put in the image description as well. *If you want to upload more than a couple of images by the same artist or if several similar images by the same artist are already on a page, please contact the artist to ask for permission. Placing images onto pages *The primary purpose of images is illustration. *Images need to be relevant and connected to a specific article. *The creation of galleries is permitted, as long as they are tethered to an article that provides context. There is no explicit limit to the number of images in a gallery, but common sense should be used to avoid cluttered pages. Style Perspective *Avoid in-universe descriptions. **For instance, when writing a summary for a short story, use the reader's perspective (e.g. "Pony X, the main character, is described..."), not a character's perspective (e.g. "Pony X was so scared her red coat turned white"). **See also wikipedia's guideline on the topic *Avoid stating absolutes. **For instance, don't write "Pony X is Pony Y's sister"; write "Pony X is often depicted as Pony Y's sister (example 1, example 2)" instead. Spelling conventions *American spellings are preferred. *Use sentence case in titles and headlines: capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and as dictated by other specific English rules. Other conventions *Avoid journalistic, fiction, promotional, and personal-essay writing conventions. *Adopt a neutral tone and avoid stating your opinions on article pages. Other Guidelines *Additional guidelines should be discussed on the wiki discussion forum before being included.